This invention relates to trading systems particularly financial trading systems.
Electronic equity markets, such as The Nasdaq Stock Market® collect, aggregate and display pre-trade information to market participants. In The Nasdaq Stock Market, for example, this pre-trade information takes the form of a quote that represents a single or an aggregate of same-priced principal or agency orders. A market such as Nasdaq also provides trading platforms through which market participants may access liquidity indicated in the marketplace.
One interface presentation in the Nasdaq trading system commonly called the Nasdaq Workstation® (hereinafter “NWII”) includes an interface having a market minder window which allows market participants to monitor price activity (inside bid/offer and last sale) of selected stocks and a dynamic quote window, which shows for a particular stock the inside bid and offer, the last sale, change in price from previous close, daily high and low, volume, and a short sale arrow indicator. The interface also contains a montage. The montage shows for a particular stock two columns (one for bid, one for ask), under which is listed by market maker identification (MMIDs) for each registered market maker, ECN, and UTP Exchange in the stock, its corresponding quote (price and size) adjacent its MMID. Nasdaq ranks the bids and offers along with the corresponding MMID in price/time priority. Accordingly, the market participant at the best bid who is first in time appears first in the montage, the market participant at the best bid (or the next best bid) who is next in time is ranked second, and so forth.